Lovely Rita

It’s half a continent away at the moment, but soon-to-be-hurricane Rita looks to be aimed straight at the Houston/Galveston region. Of course, if you check this link in a day or two or three, the projection may have changed radically. Currently it shows the storm coming ashore on Saturday morning right beside a little notch in the Texas coast that corresponds to Houston, Galveston Bay and the ship channel. We live about sixty miles northwest of there, so it might not be too bad, but we’ll be keeping an eye on the weather for the next few days to see what’s in store. The people in the Florida Keys have to deal with the storm very, very soon.

I was interested to note that the storm namers skipped Q, going straight from male Philippe to female Rita.

I finished watching Lost this weekend. Just two more nights until the big Season 2 premiere. There’s a 1-hour synopsis episode immediately before the show, which is probably skippable by anyone who’s up on the show. I bought the Best Buy bonus DVD on eBay and was disappointed to discover that the main content was the mid-season synopsis show from Season 1, which had absolutely nothing new in it. The behind-the-scenes features were brief but interesting.

Glad to see the show got some recognition at the Emmy’s last night. Fun to see people like Hurley (Jorge Garcia) all spiffed up. And then there’s Kate.

I finally got my essay for Allen K’s Inhuman magazine done this weekend. It should be in issue #4, which has a theoretical pub date of December 2005, though it might creep into ’06. This essay really kicked my butt. Allen proposed it to me back in May and it seemed like it was right up my alley. However, I struggled with it for a while. I put down words, but there’s didn’t seem to be any there there, to quote someone. Finally I came up with my thread, the stuff that holds it all together, but even them I ended up with a file full of puzzle pieces. I kept shifting paragraphs around trying to find the best way to create the big picture, and after multiple revisions, I found myself repeatedly having a hard time getting past page eight of a ten-page document. I’d revise and revise and revise the first eight pages, and not touch the last two.

Came to discover that some of the paragraphs in pages 8-10 had gotten piled up against the dam like jetsam. I pulled them out and scattered bits of them throughout the rest of the document and all of a sudden I had an essay. That didn’t stop me from shifting things over and over again, but I now saw the piece’s major arc for the first time. I turned it in today and Allen K. told me it was exactly what he was looking for and more, so I guess it was worth all the hair I pulled out!

I’m really digging Paul McCartney’s new album. It’s full of some really odd progressions that take you by surprise. When a major chord seems unavoidable, he goes minor. We got the special edition that has a DVD with behind the scenes recording features which was fun, too.